Equipping Lives for the Ministry of the Gospel, Part 1
I am often afforded the unique opportunity of teaching future ministers in a seminary setting. I was given such an invitation recently, by my good friend Steve Brown. I thus spent several hours in a class at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando in mid-March talking to future ministers. To prepare for this class I jotted down some thoughts and then spoke out of the experience of my own life from these simple notes on a hotel scrap. I then thought that I should write out some of what I spoke that morning and thereby share it now more widely. I make no claim to being profound in these insights. I do think there are some practical things here that might be helpful to many readers, whether you are in the ministry or not.
- Develop and Maintain Intellectual Curiosity
Every real leader I know has a developing and growing intellectual curiosity. This means that they have an innate desire to know things and understand how the world works and why. Simply put, they are eager to learn and expand their knowledge base. Pastors, like almost everyone else who works in an environment where they must deliver messages and teach on a regular basis, can easily fall into a trap here. They become satisfied if they can give out what is expected of them week-by-week. They will have to study, for sure, but often this study has as its singular goal the production of something else for their ministry in public; i.e., for their congregation. By this means they often reduce the activity of their minds to producing content and writing sermons. This does not feed them personally and often fails others as well. Many pastors study because they have to do it not because they love it.
Every truly careful thinker that I have known has developed a deep, deep hunger for learning. They hunger to learn what that they do not know and they are eager to become better informed. And this goes well beyond knowing the Bible and preparing outlines. They remain life-long learners who are open and serious about the life of the mind. They will pursue truth in many places and contexts. They will learn from authors and people they disagree with and not simply read to reinforce their prejudice.
When I spend time with a pastor I look around his office/study and ask several questions. What is this person reading right now that is beyond their preparation for another sermon? What excites this minister about learning, period? What have they seen, experienced or read that has touched them and challenged them in a truly human way? What are they talking about and why?
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Read, Read and Read Some More
This, following my first point, is rather obvious. Though reading is not the whole of intellectual curiosity it is clearly a major part of it. I learn from three sources: (1) The people I know, (2) The places I have been, and (3) The books I have read. I have found this saying is generally true: "Readers are leaders." Those who do not read do not learn, and those who do not learn do not grow and thus they do not become good ministers. John Wesley told his ministers to "read or get out of the ministry." I wonder what would happen if that counsel was applied today.
Every pastor will have to read some just to survive. The problem will come with what they read and why. Recently, a pastor friend was sharing with me about the experience of having interns (from a well-known conservative graduate school in this case) who were preparing and delivering sermons for the first time. He told me of his frustration with the fact that these interns knew a lot about church methodology and leadership principles but how they could not handle a biblical text and prepare a decent sermon. I fear this is all too common. And in this case the school sells itself on teaching people the Bible!
Ministers must be serious readers. They should be the very best student of the Bible in their entire congregation. But they should also read news, history, biography, literary works and poetry. They should, of course, read systematic and biblical theology as well as historical theology. Every minister, to some degree, ought to become a respectable biblical theologian. This does not mean they will simply master one textbook or repeat, like a parrot, the writings of one creed or one popular thinker. They need to have a wide exposure to the discipline of theology itself and learn how to discern good from bad. I will never forget asking Warren Wiersbe many years ago: "Why are you reading a Lutheran a-millenialist if you are a dispensational pre-millenialist?" He answered, "Why should I read what I already know?" I have carried that with me for years.
But ministers often read only a very narrow range of materials. I am suggesting that they go well beyond this and read very widely. Learn to understand the arguments of various sorts of theology and thought, and especially learning how to understand what makes people think and act they way they do, is priceless.
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Study
Paul says, "Do your best to present yourself to God, as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15). The phrase "do your best" is sometimes translated "study." The idea here is not so much "study" in the sense of sitting in a chair reading as it is "working" with all your being to understand things so that you can correctly use the Scriptures in your ministry.
Pastors today are not students like they once were. There was a time when the best-read, best-taught individual in a community was the local minister. He was the parson, the person who knew things widely and well. This is no longer the case. Most of us are not prepared broadly to think well and to lead. The emphasis today is on leadership as a technique, management as a corporate function, and on building the congregation so that it will grow numerically. The "bottom-line" is size and how the minister manages congregational developments day-to-day.
Fighting for time to truly study will always be a serious challenge for ministers. Most that do this well always have something with them and they are always listening to the best sources for what to read next. I suggest, as an example, that for every one modern book you read you read two older books. Everything about modern life and ministry wages war against this kind of study. You will have to dig and fight for the time and place to study as you ought. You have to make this a priority or you will surely fail.
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Develop a Healthy Imagination
Imagination is the power to see things that are not, to create things that have not yet been seen, to form mental images of what is not actually present. A healthy imagination is one that is alive and growing. Few ministers develop their imagination, preferring rather to give out what they know from others. This is why sermons are dull and teaching is not vivid. Such sermons only urge people to listen to more information that does not grip their minds and souls at a profoundly imaginative level. Story telling is a lost art and preaching is, quite frankly, pretty boring in most places.
So how do you develop a good imagination? I think art, film, creative writing and story-telling work well. We have to learn how to use all of these, and more, to see what we do not readily see and to feel what we would not otherwise feel.
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